Page 4

I look back. She's leaning over the banner again, curls falling forward, painting the last L like it owes her money. She still has red on her jaw.

Two weeks felt like plenty this morning. Now it doesn't feel like near enough.

Chapter Two

MONA

The alarm on my phone goes off at five fifteen, which is pointless, since I've been awake since four staring at a spreadsheet.

Column F is still wrong. The kettle corn guy from Gunnison wants a corner booth with power, the woman who sells beeswax candles refuses to be next to the kettle corn guy because of "the smell," and the only corner with power is currently assigned to Wade Sutton's cider stand. Wade will move if I ask. Wade will also look at me with those sad puppy eyes and hand me a free sample while I do it.

I peel the wrapper off a protein bar and chew while I drag cells around.

The rental cabin smells like woodsmoke and the burnt toast I abandoned an hour ago. Outside, the sky is barely gray. Somebody fixed the loose middle step on my porch last week. It wobbled for my first month here and then one morning it didn't, and when I asked at the diner, Mabel just pointed her spatula at Hank Holloway and said, "He doesn't like to talk about it." Hank didn't look up from his eggs.

This town keeps doing things for me without asking. I don't know what to do with it.

My phone buzzes against the table.

Mamá:

Are you eating?

Me:

Yes.

Mamá:

Real food or those bars?

Me:

Food adjacent.

Mamá:

Ramona.

Me:

I'm fine, Mamá. Festival is Saturday. I'll call Sunday.

Mamá:

You said that last Sunday. Te quiero, mija. Sleep.

I turn the phone face down. Sleep is for people who don't have a county grant committee coming to watch the biggest job I've landed in two years. If this goes well, they want to talk about a spring festival. They've used the word permanent twice in emails. Nobody has used that word about anything in my life for three years, and I'm not blowing it because of a portable toilet vendor named Brent.

Or a permit.

My face goes hot all over again. Page three. Standing there in front of Griffin Holloway with paint on my hands while that man read my packet upside down and found the one thing I missed. He didn't even sound smug. That was the worst part. He said it like he was reading me the weather.

I pull up the county directory, find Fire Marshal Dale Pickett's cell, and call at six on the dot. It goes to voicemail. I call again at six oh five. He picks up on the third try, groggy, and I talk fast and nice until he agrees to meet me at the county annex at seven thirty with his pen.

By seven forty the signature is in my bag, and I'm pulling into the festival lot with my heart doing a small, ugly victory dance.

He's already there.